Floridians were deeply involved in the Civil War, but events in Florida itself had secondary military significance. Even the largest battle fought in Florida, that of Olustee in 1864 when approximately 5,000 participated on each side, was small compared with the far larger battles farther north. Confederate detachments occupied the arsenal at Chattahoochee and the Pensacola Navy Yard in 1861, but most Confederate operations were either responses to Federal raiding parties, such as those directed toward Marianna and Gainesville, or moves to check and repulse Federal forces advancing inland, as from Jacksonville in 1864 and toward Tallahassee in 1865. Confederate batteries overlooking the Apalachicola River at Rock Bluff and Ricco's Bluff were manned to prevent Federal gunboats from moving inland toward Columbus, Georgia.
A primary Federal objective was to blockade the coast, and the first blockading ship arrived off Apalachicola in June 1861. On dark nights blockade runners, laden with tobacco, cotton, and turpentine, would attempt to slip out of coastal inlets, or into coastal havens with cargoes of arms and munitions, cloth, tea and coffee, medicines, and a wide range of other goods in short supply in the Confederacy. Federal ships were stationed primarily along stretches of coast such as off St. Andrews Bay and Apalachicola Bay in the west and Mosquito Inlet in the east, where blockade runners could have more effective linkage with the interior. The Indian River inlet was also favored by runners owing to their extensive use of the Bahamas. Federal occupation of coastal points such as Fort Pickens offshore from Pensacola reduced the need for blockading ships. The blockaders captured an estimated 160 vessels during the war. Federal blockading crews also raided coastal saltworks.
Florida had an important role as a larder for the Confederacy, furnishing food crops, livestock, and especially during the earlier war years, salt.
